No More Corn Syrup!

[bennelson]

The trick to still having ketchup in a restaurant? Bring your own! (It's OK, the waitress already knows I'm weird!)


We made pizza last night. No meat - just vegetables! I used canned mushrooms. I checked the ingredient list - no corn syrup, but it IS a product of CHINA! Yipes! How much diesel fuel used to ship cans of mushrooms here? I'm not planning on buying that brand again!


My wife made spaghetti tonight, starting with an organic sauce, and working it up from there. It also featured NON-MADE-IN-CHINA mushrooms from a farm store she went to today!

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by tasdrouille

I admire your determination, but why is corn syrup bad exactly? Almost anything you eat can be good or bad, it's simply a matter of dosage, or self-control.

High Fructose Corn syrup has a tendancy of not being digested properly, once in the bloodstream it oxydizes and binds with iron which makes a sticky crud that clogs arteries.
__________________________________________________ _

You should try a full fast, its not as hard as you think, 1 week once a year by the bible, I have done a few in the last couple of years, trouble is I always break the fast wrong, there just aren't good food choices in the US.

Also eating fat WILL not make you fat so long as it is a natural fat and you keep the carbohydrate content you eat with the fat low. If your cortosol levels are low your body will not metabolize more fat than you need. That is the basis of the atkins diet, which yes does work if you can follow it.

I eat huge amounts of fat, and am not fat.

Good Luck
Ryan

[bennelson]

Breakfast:
Kashi brand Breakfast cereal with milk. It took 20 minutes to chew this stuff. Tasty, and you sure can't gulp it down the way you can with heavily processed food. Coffee with natural sugar and real cream.

Lunch:
One of the new EV Club members runs a pizzaria. He brought a couple of pizzas made the night before to bake for lunch. Very tasty - good crust - No corn syrup, I checked days ahead of time.

Dinner: Kristin made from scratch Vegetable Quiche. VERY tasty! No corn syrup or meat!

Right now I have a loaf of bread rising on my kitchen counter. I have never made bread before (without a bread machine!)

If it weren't for this experiment, I don't think I would really ever bother, but because of my earlier complaint about bread having corn syrup, somebody suggested I make my own, and you know what a push-over I am.

This bread recipe is really easy to make, but takes a LONG time. I started about 20 hours ago!

I do have to say, I am really enjoying food a LOT more. It tastes better. It's more fun.

I was originally thinking that by going without corn syrup, I would be doing without. I would be MISSING my favorite foods.

Far from it. Instead, I am FREED from bad food, and it opens up a whole new world to me.

I made "simple syrup" last night. Do you even know what it is? It's real easy. It's just sugar dissolved in water. I made a simple syrup, then used that with (real) lemon and lime juice to make a margarita mix. Add plenty of ice and tequila, and BAM! Corn-syrup free cocktail time!

I was a bit disappointed recently though. When looking through the "ethnic food" aisle at the grocery store, I found the Coca-Cola from Mexico. What's great about Mexican sodas is that they use sugar, instead of corn syrup. When I double-checked the ingredient list, I found that they CHANGED THE FORMULA! My Mexican cola now contains "high fructose corn syrup AND/OR cane sugar. Looks like trade laws and other things have changed enough that they sometimes use corn syrup, and sometimes cane sugar, depending on whats available (read: cheapest) at the time.

Looks like a Rum & Coke is off my list of acceptable tasty beverages.


[EDIT: I just finished eating home-made Hazel-Nut-Chocolate Pudding! It's SOOOO good. Just because I am not eating corn syrup doesn't mean I won't eat everything else!!!]

[Katana]

If you are going to be making bread on a regular basis buy a breadmaker machine, you pretty much put the ingredents in and it kneads and cooks the bread for you, makes it much easier to continue eating it.
It also gives you the chance to try out new types of bread, or even trying your hand at a customising an existing recipe. You can also just use it to knead dough for you, which makes it much easier to make your own bread rolls or subs, or anything that uses bread dough.

[basjoos]

My wife bakes bread once a week, the whole process taking a total of about 3 hours. She mixes up the ingredients, lets it rise for an hour in a warm place, punches it back down, puts the dough in the baking pans, lets it rise for 45 min, then bakes for 30 min. The end result tastes so good that store bought bread, even the freshly baked loaves from Whole Foods, are disappointments, and the "Wonderbread" type mass-produced loaves come across as slightly toxic waste by comparison. Her bread lasts for a week without molding or going bad. I've been disappointed by all of the bread machine loaves that I've tried, as they tend to have a fairly heavy consistency and rank somewhere below the Whole Foods loaves, but well above the "wonderbread loaves". She started baking her own because it was so difficult to find store bought bread that didn't have HFCS, corn syrup, or wheat gluten listed in their ingredients. And after tasting the results of of her home baked bread, we've never gone back to the store for bread.

Another side effect of home baking we've noticed is that something about the process of kneading dough makes your fingernails grow back much stronger. Something in the yeast maybe.

[Doofus McFancypants]

second the bread machine - you control exactly what goes in and there are a lot of specality flours out there.

Bought the wife one for christmas - we have not bought bread since. she sets it up in the evening and at breakfast we have warm-fresh bread - no chemicals - no additatives - no crap - just good bread.

Our family has started to avoid rBGH ( growth hormone in milk)
With 2 little girls at home - do not want to risk what it could do to them
-- wife read somehere that it COULD cause early development of the parts I as a father am sworn to defend to the fullest extent of my ability and the law ( optional in some cases)



Have you not seen the commercials?!?! HFCS is not bad - you need to TRUST THE TV. it would not lie to you... would it?

( i wanted to cry when i saw them)
yes HFCS is not "BAD" for you in moderation.. but if it is in EVERYTHING !!!!! then how can you moderate it?

Steve

[metroschultz]

Originally Posted by bennelson

Breakfast:
Kashi brand Breakfast cereal with milk. It took 20 minutes to chew this stuff. Tasty, and you sure can't gulp it down the way you can with heavily processed food. Coffee with natural sugar and real cream.....

...I was a bit disappointed recently though. When looking through the "ethnic food" aisle at the grocery store, I found the Coca-Cola from Mexico. What's great about Mexican sodas is that they use sugar, instead of corn syrup. When I double-checked the ingredient list, I found that they CHANGED THE FORMULA! My Mexican cola now contains "high fructose corn syrup AND/OR cane sugar. Looks like trade laws and other things have changed enough that they sometimes use corn syrup, and sometimes cane sugar, depending on whats available (read: cheapest) at the time.

Looks like a Rum & Coke is off my list of acceptable tasty beverages.


[EDIT: I just finished eating home-made Hazel-Nut-Chocolate Pudding! It's SOOOO good. Just because I am not eating corn syrup doesn't mean I won't eat everything else!!!]

I love Kashi foods.
I have been eating Kashi Go Lean for years, now I have to look and see if it has corn syrup in it.

Have you tried Diet Coke?
I know it is not the same as regular but, I don't think it has any corn syrup (or sugar of any kind for that matter)

I have lost 65 pounds since becoming a member here and have reached a plateau at 265 - 270.
Perhaps cutting corn syrup from my diet will help me lose the last 70 pounds.
So I now join in the fray as a corn syrup boycottee.
Thanx Ben for a great idea,
Schultz

[jamesqf]

"Bread machine? We don't need no stinking bread machines!" - My reply when I'm asked what sort of bread machine I used when I bring homemade breads or rolls.

I've never used one, and don't quite see the point. Kneading bread is good exercise for the hands & forearms, and burns off some of the calories I'm going to get from over-indulging in the fresh-out-of-the-oven product :-)

[metroschultz]

Well I am currently out of Kashi Go Lean,
but,
I have Cheerios, Honey Nut,
I looked but don't see any HFCS on the label.
Sugar, yes,
Corn Syrup, no
Does "Converted Corn Starch" count?
And my favorite cookies,
Girl Scout Tagalongs, (and they know this, those scheming little girl scout leaders in their little girl scout houses, that's why they send a half dozen of those little high pressure salesmen to my house every year, they know I can't resist.)
are HFCS free, all stuff I can pronounce.
WooHoo!!!!

[Daveedo]

This is a great thread and thanks for the effort here Ben! Very informative.

I'm glad to see there are more people out there than I thought that have realized the mass produced processed artificial chemical feast being sold as food is not really good for you and there are much better alternatives.